Musings from the mind of the Beast.

Monthly Archives: November 2010

I’ve been on a pretty good streak the last couple weeks. On the 13th, I got a phone call to tell me that I’d won a draw to be one of the first 25 in line to see The Dog Whisperer himself, Cesar Millan, in a meet in greet on the 15th. On the 14th, it was Cesar’s seminar (more on that coming up), and on the 15th, Stephanie and I got to meet him!

Then on the 17th, I got an email from the folks at LiveNation, informing me that I’d won a pair of tickets to see none other than the Prince of F**king Darkness, Ozzy Osbourne on the 20th! The seats turned out to be awesome – row 10, in the first available section to the left of the stage. What a view!

The show opened with a montage video of Ozzy replacing several popular characters in film and television. Ozzy “took over” the roles of the lead character in Avatar, Jersey Shore, Iron Man (him taking off the Iron Man mask and proclaiming “I AM IRON MAN!” was CLASSIC), among others, including the wildly popular Twilight series.

The line of the night came from a scene in one of the Twilight movies where a female character (I haven’t seen the films or read the books) tells Ozzy’s rendition of the main character “You’re a vampire!”, to which Ozzy responds “A vampire? Vampires are pussies. I’m the Prince of Fucking Darkness!”

I’m not the hugest Ozzy fan, though he’s brought us some classic tunes that I really enjoy. I found a whole new respect for him when him and his family appeared on “The Osbournes”, where we got an inside look into his life and career. He’s gone through an awful lot, and seeing him overcome a lot of it is nothing short of awesome.

Back to the concert; I have to be honest. Ozzy is 61 years old. He’s not a spring chicken any more. He can’t move the way he used to. Actually, he’s been reduced to a pretty fast shuffle back and forth across the stage. He needs a teleprompter to make sure he doesn’t forget the lyrics. He can’t hit every note he used to.

But you know, it doesn’t really matter.

Ozzy has a new, young band behind him, and WOW, these guys are AWESOME. I wasn’t thrilled with the bass guitar players’ sound, but the guy can go. The drummer hits like a freaking monster. The guitar player? WHOA. The guy RIPS it up. I thought that during his extended solo, he’s maybe not as naturally musically inclined as other master guitar players, but there’s absolutely no doubt that when this guy straps on that guitar, he gets down to BUSINESS, business is all about rocking as hard as he possibly can. The guy can PLAY.

Ozzy and Co. SCORCHED through two and a half hours of great music, featuring classics from his time with Black Sabbath and his own solo career, as well as material from his latest album, including the smash single “Let Me Hear You Scream” (which, coincidentally, is the title of this blog post. See what I did there?).

The set included songs such as “Iron Man”, “Mama, I’m Coming Home”, “Crazy Train”, “Fairies Wear Boots”, “Mr. Crowley”, “Bark At The Moon”, “No More Tears”, “I Don’t Want to Change the World”, “Fire In The Sky”, “Shot In The Dark”, “Suicide Solution”, among others.

As per usual at a rock concert these days, the band was loud, there was a bunch of pyro explosions, and one of the cool things was that Ozzy had this giant hose next to him on stage, and every once in a while, he’d pick this hose up and unleash this MASSIVE torrent of foam all over the crowd (and the security guards in front of him!), quite often deliberately spraying himself as well. It was hilarious to see that every time Ozzy used the foam, a crew member would come roaring out from off-stage with a squeegee to wipe down the teleprompter so Ozzy could see the upcoming lyrics!

Here’s some pics shamelessly plucked from the web to better illustrate this, cause words just can’t do it justice:

Pretty awesome!

Throw in a sold out crowd and the prerequisite hot drunk chicks next to us, and this was a pretty fun event. Thanks to LiveNation and Twitter for the free tix! We’d seen Ozzy before when he was here at the old Winnipeg Arena, but we were waaaaaay at the back, and the experience wasn’t nearly as awesome as this one was.